This is the penultimate day of our Donors Choose challenge to fund needy Michigan classrooms. We have fully funded 13 separate projects and scooped up matching funds from the Gates Foundation and Hewlett-Packard.

You have all been terribly generous, but I have to ask one final favor. A generous reader just gave $100 to a project to create an outdoor science classroom focusing on gardening. It’s a terrific project and that single donation has brought the project within $300 of being fully funded. If you, dear readers, could kick in even a few small donations (in the 1-5 dollar range) I think I could find a way to get this project funded before the end of the drive.

This is the last you’ll hear from me until next October. If you could kick in a buck or two and get the word out on twitter, it would be very exciting.

Pal… I ask your forgiveness. I did not contribute to any of the Michigan projects. Not that I did not consider every one of them worthy, but the push from you and other ScienceBloggers got me looking around Donors Choose, and before I knew it, I’d contributed more than I’m willing to tell my husband about. (Not that he’d actually care, but I did go beyond our budget.)

I was a real sucker for those asking for basic supplies like pencils, paper, rulers… stuff I considered it my responsibility to furnish my children. Perhaps because I remember the year after my first husband died and I wasn’t confident I could pay for food and housing that these requests hit me the hardest. I well remember just putting the school supply list “out of my mind” that year. I couldn’t deal with it.

That was 20+ years ago, and as things stabilized for me, I tried to make up for that year by sending “extras” with my children for their classrooms.

I just wanted you to know that you also helped children outside of Michigan.

Pal, does your “This is the last you’ll hear from me until next October.” refer to blogging or begging? I hope the latter. Unless your off for a Doctors Without Borders stint in which case a selfless noodge for the former.

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